A trend in the computer industry is the use of a tower chassis to house a computer system's electrical components and associated devices. The tower chassis is characterized by a vertical cabinet that can be positioned off a desk top thereby providing the user with additional desk top space. Although the vertical nature of the tower chassis is beneficial in this respect, at times the height of the tower chassis can make it subject to occasional instability problems, such as rocking and tipping. For this reason, some tower chassises are equipped with tip prevention devices.
One such tip prevention device 100 is illustrated in FIG. 1. There is shown a tip prevention device 100 that can be mounted to the bottom surface of a tower chassis. Typically, two such tip prevention devices 100 are mounted to the tower chassis. A first tip prevention device 100 is mounted at the front of the bottom surface and a second tip prevention device 100 is mounted at the rear of the bottom surface.
The tip prevention device 100 is fabricated of plastic parts including a base bar 102 and two anti-tip feet 104a-104b. At each end of the base bar 102, there is a slot 106a-106b that houses an anti-tip foot 104. The anti-tip foot 104 rotates about an axis within the slot 106 so that the anti-tip foot 104 can be placed in a number of positions. The anti-tip foot 104 has a cylindrical-shaped head 108 including a number of detents 110a-110h spaced around the head 108. Each slot 106 includes two springs 112, where each spring 112 includes a knob 114. When the head 108 is rotated within a slot 106, each spring 112 is depressed so that its respective knob 114 rides on the outer surface of the head 108 until both knobs 114 fall into the desired detents 110. The detents 110 on the head 108 and the springs 112 are spaced so that when a knob 114 fits into a detent 110, the anti-tip foot 104 is positioned at either a 0, 45 or 90 degree angle angular position.
The tip prevention device 100 described above has several drawbacks. First, the device is dependent on the base bar 102 that is specifically configured to the dimensions of the tower chassis. The use of the device 100 for other chassises may require that the base bar 102 be tailored to the dimensions of a particular chassis. In addition, the rotation of the tip prevention device 100 is limited to a certain range so that it can be only placed in one of three specific positions. At times, it may be desirable to rotate the device in a different orientation in order to achieve a desired position. Another disadvantage is that the device 100 utilizes large plastic parts which increases the overall cost of the device 100. Accordingly, there is a need for a tip prevention device that can overcome these shortcomings.